Criminal Probe Into Cassidy Hutchinson — Democrats’ Standout Witness Against Trump — Suggests Judge Jeanine’s Star Could Be Falling

The report that a probe into a former White House aide, Cassidy Hutchinson is being handled by the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division instead of its criminal one underscores a prosecutorial apparatus in flux. Ms. Hutchinson, a former staffer to Mr. Trump’s then chief of staff, Mark Meadows who was in the West Wing on January 6, 2021, testified in lurid detail about President Trump’s behavior on that day to the House January 6 Committee. That tribunal was dominated by Democrats and ended up referring Mr. Trump for criminal prosecution. Some of Ms. Hutchinson’s most sensational allegations have been contradicted by sworn eyewitness testimony, and she is now being probed for lying to Congress, a felony which can lead to prison time if prosecutors can secure a conviction. Such cases, though, can be tricky for the government to win. Such an investigation would normally be led by the United States attorney in whose district the underlying crime is alleged to have occurred. In this case, that is the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Judge Jeanine Pirro. The New York Times reports, though, that her “series of setbacks in trying to push criminal cases against the president’s foes” engendered pause at the highest levels of the DOJ and White House. The Gray Lady relates that Ms. Hutchinson’s file is now being handled not by Mrs. Pirro but has been given “directly to Harmeet Dhillon, who runs the civil rights division.” Ms. Dhillon, who has led the Trump Administration’s pushback against elite universities has, the Times concedes, “emerged as an effective advocate for the administration’s agenda.” Mrs. Dhillon has, with the firing of Attorney General Pam Bondi and the rise of her successor and former deputy, Todd Blanche, been promoted.The Civil Rights Division describes its remit as “working to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all persons in the United States, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.” It “enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination,” mostly through giving force to the various Civil Rights Acts. That purview makes it an odd place to originate a criminal case, though the division does have a Criminal Section, which usually handles hate crimes, human trafficking, and police misconduct. Handing a criminal prosecution completely unrelated to civil rights could lead to a challenge by Ms. Hutchinson’s attorneys. It’s also possible that Ms. Hutchinson could be charged with violating Mr. Trump’s civil rights with her testimony. Early this year, it was reported that the DOJ had a grand jury investigating New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, for violating Mr. Trump’s civil rights when she sued his family companies. That case has become mired in a dispute with the judiciary over the legitimacy of the appointment of its chief prosecutor. Mrs. Dhillon told the Federalist Society after her appointment that her aim at the Civil Rights Division is to turn “the train around and drive in the opposite direction.” She was born to a Sikh family in India who emigrated to London, the Bronx and then North Carolina. She graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Virginia Law School.While the bailiwick of the Civil Rights division is civil rather than criminal litigation, the prosecutors in Mrs. Dhillon’s office are just as empowered as those in Mrs. Pirro’s to bring criminal cases, but they are usually related at least tangentially to civil rights. Mr. Trump himself shared the news that Mrs. Hutchinson had been criminally referred to the DOJ by House Republicans who are conducting their own investigation into January 6 in response to the work of the earlier committee.Mrs. Hutchinson’s testimony was extraordinary — she related how Mr. Trump threw a plate against a dining room wall and how he tried to wrest control of the presidential limousine known as “The Beast” and commandeer his way to the Capitol during the riot — but largely relied on accounts she heard second hand. Even Special Counsel Jack Smith, who sought to convict Mr. Trump for January 6, testified that he would not have relied on her testimony in court. Mrs. Pirro, who replaced Ed Martin as the top DC federal prosecutor after he failed to garner enough votes for confirmation, has suffered a string of setbacks. A grand jury refused her office’s request to hand up charges against six Democratic lawmakers who made a video telling servicemembers that they had a duty to disobey illegal orders. That insinuated that the commander in chief was behind such unlawful commands. Mrs. Pirro also failed to build a criminal case against President Biden over the 46th president’s use of the autopen to sign presidential pardons and other documents. In June Mr. Trump signed an executive order declaring that the use of the autopen “marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history. The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power.”A third strike against Mrs. Pirro came when Judge James Boasberg quashed subpoenas sent by the DOJ to the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell. He is the subject of an investigation into overrun in the renovation of the Reserve’s headquarters. Judge Boasberg, who has locked horns with Mr. Trump over immigration — the president has called for him to be impeached — ruled that the subpoenas were motivated by a desire to harass.Mrs. Pirro is hardly alone with respect to prosecutors who have failed to execute the president’s agenda. The effort to convict the former FBI director James Comey and New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, was upended when the prosecutor in charge, Lindsey Halligan, was deemed unlawfully appointed by Ms. Bondi. The DOJ is appealing that ruling.

Criminal Probe Into Cassidy Hutchinson — Democrats’ Standout Witness Against Trump — Suggests Judge Jeanine’s Star Could Be Falling

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